If you've ever been stuck trying to send a large file by email and getting frustrated that the email would not leave your inbox, or that the recipient's inbox was full and would not allow a 15MB email, then I might have a solution for you.

Dropbox is a web-based storage solution that lets you store and share your files easily. It automatically synchronises a defined "dropbox" folder on your computer so that you can retrieve the files in this folder from anywhere on the web. But the beauty of this solution is that you can install the Dropbox application on your machine, be it a mac or PC and also on your iPhone and iPad, which means that you can find your files instantly on any device.

I would recommend anyone to use Dropbox for personnal or professional use, it's just a life saver and a very productive tool. You can open a free account that will let you store up to 2GB, so no excuse there.

But for now let's go back to our initial problem:

How to send large files with dropbox

When you open an account with dropbox, it automatically creates some folders for you, including the "Public" folder. That's where you want to place the file that needs to be sent. Basically this folder is not password protected, so other people can view its content, but they need to know the exact URL of each file to find it.

Working online:

Navigate to the Public folder.

Select the file you want to share and right-click on it.

Click on "Copy public link".

Copy the URL of the file.

Working on your machine:

Navigate to the Public folder of your Dropbox folder.

Select the file you want to share and right-click on it. In the menu, select Dropbox > Copy public link.

All you need to do now is to send this URL by email to the person you want to share the file with. They won't need any login credentials to access it.

This method works for sending large files but also for sending large folders, all you need to do is compress the folder and send the Zip file.

Of course there are other ways to send large files, by ftp or with services like www.yousendit.com, but Dropbox is one of my favorite since I use it anyway on a daily basis. What's your favorite file sharing method ?